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May 19th, 2008 — 800 Meter Run, Athletics, Russia
Earlier, we brought you how Australia’s Brenton Rickard trains for the Olympics. Now, let’s have Olympic 800m champion Yuriy Borzakovskiy tell us something about his training:
I train twice a day, six days per week. With this I need 8 to 9 hours of sleep each night and one-and-a-half hours of sleep in the afternoon. On Wednesday or Thursday I usually have one practice, and instead of the second one I go to a banya, and on Sunday I have banya too.
May 19th, 2008 — China
China’s Xing Huina will not defend her Olympic title (women’s 10,000-meter) because of a thigh injury which prevented her from training for the Beijing Games. That leaves Liu Xiang as the only legitimate gold medal favorite among Chinese athletes competing in track events.
PHOTO SOURCE: BBC
May 19th, 2008 — Speedo LZR Controversy
If AP writer Nancy Armour really believes that the Speedo controversy is much ado about nothing, why doesn’t she ask American athletes not to wear the LZR swimsuit. If it doesn’t make any difference in how an athlete performs, then why do they have to change suits?
May 19th, 2008 — Turkey, Weight Lifting
Turkish weightlifter Halil Mutlu is a three time Olympic gold medalist. He hopes to get another gold when he goes to Beijing in August. Who could stop him from getting his fourth gold medal? Chinese weightlifters who’ve been trying to out-lift him for years.
Here’s a quote from Halil Mutlu about his prospects in Beijing: “The Chinese have been trying to beat me for years without success. They will try to be successful this time. I need to be more careful not to let them do this.”
May 19th, 2008 — Canada, Vancouver 2010, Winter Games
You will become our idol if you will also speak out for aboriginal rights before Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Games in 2010? Maybe you should also ask athletes to think about Canada’s treatment of Native Canadians before they participate in the Vancouver Games.
If you will say something like that, we will be happy to include you in our honor list of people (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, etc) and institutions (Amnesty International, etc) who have an admirable human rights record.
May 19th, 2008 — Speedo LZR Controversy, Swimming
So long as there is doubt whether the LZR Speedo is giving unfair advantage to swimmers who use it, I can’t understand why FINA would continue to sanction its use. I also don’t understand why otherwise honorable athletes — I’m looking at you Americans and Australians — would be okay with using it.
Whatever happened to your sense of fairness? Whatever happened to having an even playing field? Are Olympic winners now going to be determined by what athletes wear and not whether they are the fastest or the strongest? Maybe the ancient Greeks who competed buck naked have the right idea after all.
May 19th, 2008 — Cuba, Judo, Scandals and Controversies
Did she defect to the United States? Or did something bad happen to her that we still don’t know about? Yurisel Laborde is a Cuban judoka who won a bronze medal during the 2004 Olympics in Athens. She also boasts of two Judo World Championships gold medals which she bagged in 2005 and 2007.
After winning a gold medal during the 2008 Pan American Judo Championships in Miami last week, Yurisel disappeared. Pretty mysterious, eh?
May 19th, 2008 — United States
How much incentive money does the United States award to its Olympic medal winners? According to CNNmoney.com, the United States Olympic Committee gave out the following amounts in 2004:
$25,000 to gold medal winners, $15,000 to those who take home a silver and $10,000 for a bronze
May 19th, 2008 — Cuba
Want to win an Olympic medal? Be cooperative rather than competitive. Don’t take my word for it. Take the words of sports psychologist Susan Butt who believes that Cuba’s remarkable achievements in the Olympics could be traced to its emphasis on “reinforcing feelings of competence and co-operation in athletes” rather than “promoting aggression and competition”.
